Americans are split between excitement and fear over President-elect Trump’s return to the White House next week, according to a survey released Tuesday.
The new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll found that the incoming president has generated strong feelings right before his second foray into the Oval Office with 31 percent of respondents saying they felt “excited” about him being the commander-in-chief again while another 31 percent said they were “afraid.”
The ratio is more positive for Trump compared to his initial swearing-in after the 2016 presidential election. In December 2016, just 16 percent of Americans said they felt “excited” while 38 percent were “alarmed” about his ascent to the White House.
Nearly half of the registered voters who were polled — 47 percent — said the economy, one of the top issues during the 2024 presidential election, was the main issue they want Trump to address during his second term. Immigration ranked second among respondents, at 21 percent.
Voters said the two issues they do not want Trump to tackle are probing President Biden’s administration and congressional Democrats, at 24 percent, and giving out pardons to those indicted or convicted related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to the survey.
When asked about Congress, the priority for respondents was slashing the federal budget deficit over extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Around 53 percent of voters surveyed said Congress should be keen on cutting down the federal budget deficit, even if that results in not extending the president-elect tax cuts that were initially passed in 2017, according to the poll. Only 28 percent said lawmakers should extend the tax cuts, even if it adds up to the deficit.
Trump heavily campaigned on implementing tariffs on a variety of U.S. imports, but those were not a priority for the survey’s respondents. Just 2 percent said they should be the president-elect’s top focus during his term, while another 11 percent said they should not be done at all, according to the poll.
The survey was conducted from Jan. 7-11 among 1,000 registered votes. The margin of error was 3.1 percentage points.
